Current airplane wing manufacturing can require several holes to be drilled by a mechanic in tight and difficult to access positions. Currently, mechanics use a drill jig to locate and drill an undersized pilot hole. The mechanic may then remove the drill jig from the pilot hole and drill the pilot hole up to the final full hole diameter. Such a procedure is typically done in multiple steps, using a drill cup to aid in keeping the drill bit normal to the drilling surface. However, in reaching to drill hole locations in difficult to access locations, it may become difficult to keep the drill cup stationary and on the drilling surface. This may result in misdrilled and/or misangled holes.
One solution to this problem is to create a standalone drill motor that can clamp to the drilling surface and power feed the drill bit through the surface, thereby ensuring holes are perpendicular to the drilling surface. In some instances, this solution may help with the issue of misdrilled and/or misangled holes, but can require indexing to the drilling surface as part of the drill motor. This requires multiple variations of drill motors for each hole location on the drilling surface, with custom indexing for each drill motor, which can become very costly.